Good-ish news, I think: Kathleen Irwin, the head of the U of R’s theatre department, popped into the comments section of my last post and dropped some knowledge:

As of May 1 2012, the Theatre Department began to focus attention on the delivery of its core degree, the BA in Theatre and Performance. We see this as a way of consolidating our course offerings into a unified, flexible degree that optimizes our skills and resources and enables students to choose widely from a menu of courses that reaches across the Fine Arts disciplines or to pursue training in selected streams within the art form (Acting, Design/ Stage Management).

We believe that this will educate students to be broad thinking and resourceful in their approach to creativity while they are here at the university and when they graduate into the world beyond whether they chose to pursue further training in theatre, a professional career or higher education.

In reality, nothing changes in the delivery of our program other than the name change. In doing this we feel we are reflecting a current shift across North America in the delivery of performance-based undergraduate training by allowing our student more control over their course of study. We are excited to offer a more progressive degree – A BA in Theatre and Performance that will highlight traditional training in addition to innovative courses in creative technologies and community-oriented practice.

While we will, as of January 1 2013, suspend admissions to the BFA stream, we continue to admit students into the new BA stream in Theatre and Performance. Current BFA students have 6 years to complete their BFA degree.

A bunch of that is still in worrisome language (I have an instinctive distrust of phrases like “innovative courses in creative technologies and community oriented practice,” because I have an instinctive distrust of pretty much anything approaching jargon) but any assurances that the program will still be delivered are welcome ones.